Microsoft’s Windows Azure Experiences Major Outage (Updated)

The service management system has been down for roughly half a day now

The Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud service, has had its management system down for the past several hours in various regions around the world.

Apparently, even if the system was meant to be redundant, and the outages supposed to affect only small regions, it all went down worldwide.

Microsoft already announced that it was aware of the situation and that it was working on solving the problem. The service has been down since 1.45am GMT.

The company has been offering updates on the system's status on this online page, where it announced that it is working on the deployment of a fix.

“We are experiencing an issue with Windows Azure service management. Customers will not be able to carry out service management operations,” Microsoft said on that page, The Inquirer reports.

Moreover, the company also announced a few hours later that it found the root of the problem and that it was working on resolving the issue.

The software giant has been testing a fix for the issue for the past several hours, and it has already started to roll it out.

“We have started a gradual rollout of the hotfix in North Central US sub-region. As we proceed through the rollout, we will progressively enable service management back for customers,” the Redmond-based software giant noted on the said page.

“Further updates will be published to keep you apprised of the situation. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes our customers.”

This is not the first outage that hits Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. The service management system has been down for almost a day back in 2009. Apparently, even if Microsoft tried to eliminate all of the possible problems with it, there still are some issues that remained unsolved.

Those who would like to stay on top of this should head over to the the aforementioned Windows Azure Service status page. Given the fact that the company has already found the cause of the problem, it should not be too long before the system is restored. Stay tuned for more on this.

Update: Microsoft has added more info on the matter on the said page, stating that it has expanded the scope of the hotfix rollout to all sub-regions.

"The hotfix rollout continues. As we proceed through the rollout, we will progressively enable service management back for customers. Further updates will be published to keep you apprised of the situation. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes our customers," the latest update there reads.